Effect of the interaction of water and nitrogen on sunflower under drip irrigation in an arid region

Mina Kiani, Mahdi Gheysari, Behrouz Mostafazadeh-Fard, Mohammad Mahdi Majidi, Kazem Karchani and Gerrit Hoogenboom

Agricultural Water Management, 2016, vol. 171, issue C, 162-172

Abstract: Sunflower has become an important crop for oil production in many arid regions across the globe. However, with water as a scarce resource, efficient water and nutrient management systems need to be identified. The goal of this project was to determine the interaction between water and nitrogen (N) for sunflower grown in an arid environment. Experiments were conducted during 2010 and 2011 in an arid region in Iran that included two sunflower hybrids, four levels of surface drip irrigation, ranging from severe deficit irrigation to over irrigation, and three levels of N fertilizer, i.e. 0, 47, and 93kgNha−1. The treatments were arranged in a strip-plot design with complete randomized blocks with three replications. Irrigations were based on daily monitoring of soil moisture in the experimental plots. For both hybrids, irrigation and the interaction of water and N had a significant effect (P<0.01) on total biomass, seed yield, oil yield, and N Use Efficiency (NUE). Maximum sunflower seed and oil production (4031 and 1635kgha−1, respectively) occurred in over irrigation and 93kgNha−1. The lowest soil N uptake was 31kgha−1 for deficit irrigation, while the highest was 99.5kgha−1 for over irrigation. The highest seed NUE was 26.7kgkg−1 and oil NUE was 12.2kgkg−1 for over irrigation with no N input. Increasing the amount of N fertilizer was not a suitable strategy under severe deficit irrigation. Overall, the optimal levels of N depended on the sunflower hybrid type and varied for different levels of irrigation. Adjusting N fertilizer rates to meet crop requirements based on the amount of water applied and the type of hybrid not only prevented a negative environmental impact, but also increased yield and conserved agricultural inputs for sunflower grown in an arid region.

Keywords: Deficit irrigation; Water balance; Nitrogen use efficiency; Oil yield (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2016
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (7)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0378377416301251
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:agiwat:v:171:y:2016:i:c:p:162-172

DOI: 10.1016/j.agwat.2016.04.008

Access Statistics for this article

Agricultural Water Management is currently edited by B.E. Clothier, W. Dierickx, J. Oster and D. Wichelns

More articles in Agricultural Water Management from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().